From Forbes, Ellen Huet reports that Sprig, a company that delivers meals through an app, is changing its workers from independent contractors to employees. Ellen writes:
“Sprig, a San Francisco on-demand startup that makes and delivers meals to users who order through an app, is switching its delivery workers from independent contractors to employees, the company said. Though the move will raise benefit and insurance costs for the company, it allows Sprig to train its workers more without getting into legal hot water with independent contractors, who can’t be told how to do their jobs.
It also gives Sprig and the other companies who’ve converted workers in the past few months — Instacart , Shyp, Luxe — a bit of goodwill in the midst of a national discussion about how to protect workers in a “gig”-based economy.
“We’re making the change primarily because we want to be able to have more training and development for our workforce,” said CEO Gagan Biyani.
Unlike some other on-demand companies that switched, Sprig never faced a worker misclassification lawsuit from contractors claiming they were actually employees. And no company making the switch has cited lawsuits as the main reason for reclassifying their workers, focusing instead on the new ability to train them. But the legal threat must loom over some of these companies’ minds, especially after Homejoy cited lawsuits as a “deciding factor” for shutting down — even though former employees told FORBES the company failed because it had poor customer retention…”
Read the full story at Yet Another On-Demand Service, Sprig, Switches Its Independent Contractors To Employees
